Polly Morgan talks A Quiet Place Part 2 on the film’s would-be premiere day

In honor of what would have been the premiere day for A Quiet Place Part 2, Hidden Remote sat down with cinematographer Polly Morgan to talk about the film.

For two years A Quiet Place fans have been anxiously awaited the second installment to director John Krasinski’s 2018 horror drama. A Quiet Place Part 2 was set to premiere today, but with the coronavirus quarantine prompting Krasinski to announce the film’s release would be postponed “til we can all see it together,” it looks like we all will have to wait a little longer for the story to continue. Until then, in honor of what would have been the premiere day for A Quiet Place Part 2, Hidden Remote sat down with cinematographer Polly Morgan to talk about the film.

Most well-known for filming Legion, Lucy in the Sky, and 6 Balloons, Morgan has a special spot in her heart for the dramatic, the thrilling, and the emotional. The cinematographer shared with us some behind the scene info about filming A Quiet Place Part 2, the western-style inspirations for Krasinski’s vision for the film, the emotions that came with being a new mom herself onset and why it’s important people see the movie together in the theatre.

Hidde Remote: How did you end up getting involved with A Quiet Place Part 2? What drew you to the project?

Polly Morgan: Well, other than it being a fabulous movie, I was a new mother and the fact that this film is really sort of a family drama and all about parents taking care of their children, it really resonated with me. I thought the story was so beautifully done and full of so much emotion, I was excited John was making a sequel.

Hidden Remote: I’ve also seen your work in the show Legion and I think what’s interesting is that your cinematography is always very mind-bending. It’s the same too with your 2019 film with Noah Hawley, Lucy in the Sky. It’s almost like viewers are in a dream. Your filming is very disorienting but in a good way. Is that a style that you really enjoy?

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Morgan: The part most interesting to me is what message the script is trying to convey. Before I signed onto do Legion, most of my work was based in naturalism and driven by emotion. Within its writing, Legion is so surreal and deals with so many heavy concepts that it was exciting to work on because it lent itself to a really visual style and a lot of experimentation. Lucy in the Sky also had a lot of magical realism in it to convey her emotional state. When I read the script for A Quiet Place Part 2, John wrote it in a way that was extremely visual and you could almost see the movie on the page.

On top of that, like the first movie, this one is full of a mother’s emotion to protect her children and the children dealing with having to fight for their lives and dealing with the loss of their father. So even though it’s a horror movie, really, at its core, it’s a drama. That’s what I love most about it.

Hidden Remote: How does this sequel differentiate itself from the first A Quiet Place? What really sets it apart?

Morgan: The family has to leave the safety of the farmhouse for the first time. They have to move on and explore new ground. This is the story of the expanding world and what’s beyond the sand path they’ve put down and introduces other survivors. While the first movie was about parents needing to protect their children, at the core of this movie it’s very much about children having to fend for themselves and growing up and learning that it’s not just the creatures they have to be afraid of.

Also, the way that John talked about the film in the beginning stages of us working together, he gave us the description that this movie was going to be like a modern western, so we watched films like There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men before filming A Quiet Place Part 2 to get an idea for how to use moonlight and firelight and candlelight to create the atmosphere we were looking for.

Hidden Remote: A modern western? That’s such an interesting description of this film. 

Morgan: You’ll know what I mean when you see it. It’s really like a big stand-off of good and bad in an old-fashioned sense.

Hidden Remote: Did you also utilize any cinematography techniques from working on Legion and Lucy in the Sky while filming A Quiet Place Part 2?

Morgan: The one thing that Legion used in order to tell the story was a lot of camera movement and it had a very expressive style of camera work. When I first spoke to John about this, because this movie is a journey about exploring new ground, I think he really wanted to feel a lot more energy with the camera. As our characters explore new spaces, the camera had to feel very dynamic and I definitely took a lot of what I learned on Legion in order to create very fluid and exciting scenes that will help the viewers explore the world along with the characters.

Hidden Remote: Speaking of fluidity, the scene where Emily Blunt’s character is driving in the car with her children, it’s almost like being in the backseat with them. There’s really no cut sequence. It’s all one long scene where you can hear their breathing and you can only see what they’re seeing. Is that another common trend in this film? 

Morgan: Yeah, we really didn’t want to do any cutaways or POVs. We wanted to create these very long camera moves that make you feel like you’re with these characters. So whatever the jeopardy was, you would see who was in jeopardy and what the jeopardy was. It’s a lot about connection. That’s another thing that makes this film different from the first. We have all these long takes and don’t really give viewers a chance to breathe. You’re on the ride with this family and feeling everything they’re feeling.

Hidden Remote: And what was it like working with icons like Emily Blunt and John Krasinski?

Morgan: Firstly, Emily is a complete joy to work with. She’s just a beautiful woman to work with on set, she’s so lovely and professional. And John is such a visual director and he really knew what kind of movie he was making. All of us on the crew were always just trying to keep up with him. John pushed us all creatively and I think this is a fantastic movie because of that.

Hidden Remote: Do you have any favorite scenes from the film?

Morgan: When the movie opens, it shows day one which charts the time when the creatures first arrive and the town’s reaction to it. The pacing of that sequence and the action nature of it, and the way we use the camera and light, I think it’s a really engrossing part of the film.

Hidden Remote: Being a new mother yourself and going on this journey with Emily’s character and her kids, were there any parts where you got emotional while you were filming?

Morgan: Yes. Definitely. They’re making this journey with a young baby and they’re really trying to protect this baby and often they have to put the baby in a box. It’s distressing for everybody, but also distressing for the baby.

My baby was eight weeks old when I started the movie and I was breastfeeding throughout the whole shoot, so I was definitely feeling quite hormonal. When you’re shooting a movie, even though you know everything isn’t real and that everything is fake, it’s quite heavy material to be working on during that time.

Hidden Remote: What are some things you learned as a cinematographer being on this film?

Morgan: There were a lot of complicated ideas, like some underwater sequences, we needed to pull off to tell this story and it took a lot of people to come together and collaborate. The thing that’s really stayed with me is that, in filmmaking, you need a strong leader and John was that for us, but it takes everyone. The stunt coordinator, the visual effects department, the grip department—we are all nothing without each other. The film has a lot of ambitious ideas that were pulled off because of a lot of determined people.

Hidden Remote: What are you most excited about for people to see A Quiet Place Part 2?

Morgan: The best thing about this film is you have to go see it in a theater. It’s one of those movies that, when you see it with a group of people, everyone has physical reactions to it. This movie will make you laugh, it will make you jump, and it will make you cry. I went to see the premiere with my husband and he was literally gripping my thigh the whole time. So, even with the coronavirus, you have to go see this with other people because it’s a rollercoaster.

What are you most excited to see in A Quiet Place Part 2 when the film finally releases? Let us know in the comments below!